When I started picking up on Drupal I began learning about Drupal 6 because Drupal 7 was off in the distant future. Well, Drupal 7 was released for production on Jan. 5 this year and I’ve still been in the “sometime in the future mode” until the last few days (peeling back the onion some more) http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0. Now, work has begun on Drupal 8 to be released sometime in the future.

Drupal 7 has some features that make sense for a new web site I’m working on – Organic Groups and Web Services. While these aren’t new they have some updates to the way they work. The CCK and Views have been two of the most important modules for Drupal 6 web sites. It appears that Drupal 7 now replaces them with Fields. Drupal 8 is planned to include some features I want to design for like incorporating a higher degree of web services. I ordered another book that should arrive today, this one about Drupal 6 Web Services. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849510989 I see web services as an important component in connecting interactions between Drupal and MicroStation, AutoCad or other future CAD/CAE systems. Since I’m starting off with a new web project is seems like the best time to jump into Drupal 7 development.

Using Git to Download Drupal 7

I don’t understand enough about Git yet but was able to use it and get a copy from the Drupal Git repository. I was worried about making mistakes in setting up my local repository like where it should reside how can I undo a mistake. I made a few mistakes along the way and learned they could be erased by deleting the “.git” folder. If it turns out I overlooked something about erasing a repository I’ll add more information here. This article seemed to be helpful: http://drupal.org/node/803746#setup I managed to get a local site working with Drupal 7 last night.

I got a rudimentary install with Organic Groups and several other features set up within a Drupal 7 environment. So far, so good. Something I could use some help with is finding out what the recommended practice are to take the MySql database from its Drupal 6 configuration to Drupal 7. My initial search didn’t come up with a worthwhile suggestion yet. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place.